Thank you for the link but I was unable to find the section of the site that contained the information you tried to give me.

Info is in their books, best on the subject probably. The kings servant one has info on coats with integral bases.

I'm not aware of any specific work on ones made for wearing over armour. Can't even recall an original left anywhere, but bet there is... Somewhere

Alright thank you very much for the information!

I don't think you'd have any luck locating examples of bases being worn alone (instead of being part of a coat or doublet) in unarmoured contexts. I've never seen any such thing myself, in contrast to numerous examples of coats or doublets with such voluminous (and often heavily pleated) skirts.

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That one was presumably an image of Swiss Guards in the Papal States, and it took me only a few minutes to find on Google. Similar images aren't hard to find if you know what to look for. For instance, check out the World Gallery of Art (http://www.wga.hu/) and have a look at European art from the first couple of decades of the 16th century. There are also some older threads and articles with relevant pictures, like these:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...ight=tudor

http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_mow_clifford.html (a VERY late and rather unusual example of a long-skirted doublet)

That being said, it won't do you much good to focus your search solely on this subject, since you'd need to understand the broader context of fashion at the turn of the 16th century too if you don't want to just end up with a Braveheart-style ahistorical mishmash.

Well, bases obviously weren't kilts, and the only evidence I've seen show them being worn:

a. without armour, as an integral part of a coat or doublet

b. with armour, as a skirt without a coat's body

c. with armour, as an integral part of a coat

but not

d. without armor and not attached to the body of a coat or doublet

So I just don't want him to get the wrong impression about how bases are supposed to be worn (unless somebody manages to prove me wrong by showing me an example of (d)). It's also important to know when they can be worn and by whom, not to mention the other garments and accessories that make up the whole outfit.

(That is, except if he ends up settling for a fantasy or modern outfit, in which case it's not really my business to point these things out.)

Oh no worries, I am well aware of how terribly ahistorical Braveheart was and am well aware that these were not kilts. I was merely curious as to whether bases were ever worn like kilts but now I see they generally were not.

Thank you for your help!

Nope. They weren't. On the other hand, nobody's stopping you from using them as inspiration for a skirt-like element in a fantasy kit if you'd like to do that instead.

I am considering doing something like that: making a fantasy kit and harness based on some historical pieces to give them form an function.

I watched this video when it first came out but forgot to post about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAIQPsgZWY

At one point, Toby Capwell mentions that English armour often had the plate skirts/faulds (known as "paunces") built separately from the cuirass, although of course they wouldn't have been worn without the cuirass.

One great historical source for images of bases is Die Abenteuer des Ritters / The Adventures of the Knight Theuerdank (1517), a ficitonalised account of the life of Kaiser Maximillian I, produced in facsimile edition by Taschen (2003). Secondhand copies can currently be found for a very reasonable sub-$50.